Around the World in Eighty Days

 

By Jules Verne

 

Another classic book ticked off (published in 1873). Not a favourite and therefore I would only give it 3 stars. 

At 250 pages, the novel unfortunately felt a lot longer than that. I found it quite inconsistent, dragging on in some parts then rushing through others so quickly I had to go back and reread them to fully understand what I had read.

 

The novel is about Phileas Fogg, a rich loner who follows the exact same schedule everyday. One day at his local club, he rashly bets his companions £20,000 that he can travel around the entire globe in just eighty days. And so the book goes on to detail the many disasters that he and his new assistant, Passepartout must overcome to win the extraordinary wager.

Some scenarios were humorous but many far fetched. I skimmed towards the last third of the book. The detailed explanations of the travelling plan didn't exactly grab my attention and was quite boring in parts, not caring for the long multi-paragraph descriptions of places

 

I found Fogg to be a great character, very forgiving and patient, especially when it comes to his assistant.

Passepartout was just frustrating and naive, didn't like his character at all.

The writing was unfortunately quite bad, but that might be due to the fact that it was written in French and later translated into English.